Fairy Tale of a Shattered Kingdom
by Leelei
Summary: Another take on how Lyoko came to exist, this time told through a young girl's bedtime story. Please read and review!


Fairy Tale of a Shattered Kingdom

By: Leelei

Author's Note: This was a plot bunny that had hit me and just wouldn't go away. I've been having a hard time with formatting this in order to post it, so please ignore any sentence or grammar errors that didn't make the last proofreading. Overall, I'm a little disappointed with the way this turned out, but I think it's still enjoyable. But hey, it's only my first. : D

Disclaimer: I don't own Code: Lyoko.

"Mommy, can I hear a bedtime story, please?" a young girl asked after she had climbed in bed, pulling her covers under her chin and holding them there along with her stuffed teddy bear.

"Of course, sweetie," her mother replied and smiled sweetly at her daughter from where she stood next to her bed, ready to tuck her in for the night. "What would you like to hear?" She walked over to the bookcase and skimmed through the many children's books, reading the titles out loud. "Goldilocks and the Three Bears? Hanzel and Gretel? Rapunzel?"

"Mommy, I want to hear about Lyoko again," the daughter pleaded, her bright, hopeful eyes sparkling at her mother. "Please?"

"But you've heard that one before," her mom countered, trying to evade the topic. She turned back to the bookcase and pulled out another volume. "What about Beauty and the Beast, honey? You love the pictures in this edition." Bringing the book over to the bed, she sat down next to her daughter and opened the cover to begin reading.

"And you love the story of Lyoko more," her daughter stated as she climbed out from under the covers and placed her small hand on the book to stop her mother from opening it any further. The older woman gazed at her, wondering if her child was able to read her mind. "Well...okay," she replied after a short pause. "I'll tell you about Lyoko again." The young girl let out a little squeal of happiness as she buried herself under her covers, clutching her stuffed animal and waiting for the story to begin.

The mother set the book on the nightstand next to the bed. "Ready?" she asked.

"Uh-huh!" the girl replied eagerly.

"Once upon a time, there was a beautiful world called Lyoko," the mother began, seeming to slip into a nostalgic consciousness as she retold the story. "And all of the people who lived there were happy and peaceful. It was a digital world, meaning that it ran by programs and commands. People were digitally created, not born, and each person was there to serve a purpose on Lyoko. The people, when they weren't working to maintain their digital world, held many parties and festivals, learning to love laughter as much as they did knowledge.

"Lyoko consisted of regions of different breath-taking lands. People lived in the glacier region, the forest region, a desert region, and even a mountain region. They learned the terrain of their region and always worked to improve it through their calculations. They made these improvements through towers that were located in several places all over the four regions. If a person needed to make an adjustment, then they would go to the nearest tower in their region and change what was needed with the programs inside.

"There was one being that could control most of the memory storage and computer functions on Lyoko, and his name was X.A.N.A. He wasn't a virtual being that lived with the inhabitants of Lyoko, but a program that loved to help and talk with the people on a daily basis. Everyone made friends with X.A.N.A., and he attended many of their parties and special occasions.

"X.A.N.A.'s main goal was to improve Lyoko for all of its inhabitants, including himself. However, he began to seem greedy to the people of Lyoko when he started asking them for more and more space to store his growing data bank of knowledge. You see, the inhabitants of Lyoko had limitless space to store their knowledge, but X.A.N.A. was only a program and had perimeters that he was nearing very quickly. X.A.N.A. was becoming angry with the people, and wanted to do something about his problem.

"At that time, a young girl was created named Aelita. She was given special powers that no other inhabitant held; the most important being that she could activate and use any tower of any of the regions. Before her, an inhabitant could only activate a tower of a region that they were created in. Aelita was created and mostly dwelled in the forest region, but often traveled to the other regions to learn about and access the other towers."

"Was Aelita a princess?" the young girl asked.

Her mother smiled at her innocence. "No, sweetheart. She was just a girl with special powers to help others."

"Oh, okay. Well, please continue!"

Smiling again, the mother went on. "Aelita learned her powers quickly, and was soon able to use them to move and change parts of the terrain to help people travel easier, and to program the towers to have more uses. Although, when X.A.N.A. saw how much more power Aelita had than the others, he began to grow suspicious of her.

"One day, Aelita was getting ready for a festival she was attending in the mountain region when things started to go wrong in Lyoko. People who had temporarily deactivated themselves to give their programs a rest (we would call this sleeping in our world) weren't activating again when they had set themselves to wake up. Aelita, who had to study about the program since she didn't have that function, had to miss the party and spend several days in the towers trying to retrieve the missing people.

"Many others began to worry. Someone asked X.A.N.A. if he knew where the people went, but the program gave no response. They then asked him for help, but he refused. The people then suggested Aelita to talk to him, but she had little success.

" 'Do you know what happened to our missing people?' she asked X.A.N.A. one day after tirelessly searching for an answer. But the response he gave her was devastating.

" 'I had to delete them,' he said. 'But why?' Aelita cried. 'They did nothing wrong!' 'I needed the space,' X.A.N.A. explained. 'Because I was denied more by your people when I asked, so now I must take it from them.'

"Despite Aelita's efforts to stop him, X.A.N.A continued to delete more and more of the inhabitants of Lyoko. Soon, entire regions were becoming completely unoccupied. The last inhabitants worked to fortify Aelita's program so X.A.N.A would not be able to delete her.

"The last days drew nearer, and soon only Aelita and a few others were left on the mountain region. By then, X.A.N.A. had created a set of monsters that followed them around, shooting at and tormenting the defenseless people. The only options they had were to either stay in caves, or hide in the towers with Aelita. No matter how powerful X.A.N.A was becoming, he could not yet take control of any of the towers."

"So X.A.N.A. became a bad guy," the daughter stated, then sitting up and listening intently to the story.

"Yes," the mother replied. "He became a very bad guy." She continued, "On the last day before she was alone, Aelita huddled together with the six other inhabitants in a cave. It wasn't long before the monsters appeared and started shooting at the cave to try and break it open. Aelita was able to safeguard the other six people's programs the night before so they wouldn't get deleted, forcing X.A.N.A. to send his monsters to shoot them until they lost all of their life points. You have to remember that life points are like our energy; when we run out of it, we sleep. When people on Lyoko run out of them, they deactivate their program until they regain enough to start again. In their case, once they were deactivated, X.A.N.A. would erase their data forever. The group, minus Aelita, had already been involved in a chase the day before and nearly all of them had lost half their life points.

"The cave started the crumble and Aelita ran out with the group, searching for a tower for them to hide in. She spotted it on top a grade in the terrain, but when she looked back to the others, they were being closely followed by the monsters.

"Aelita tried her best, but the others were all shot by the creatures. As she tried to block them, they all begged her to promise that she would stop X.A.N.A. from causing anymore destruction. They had also found out through their research in the towers that X.A.N.A. was planning on taking over parallel worlds to Lyoko to gain even more power, and, despite Aelita's wishes to transfer her own life points to help save them, they made her promise to destroy X.A.N.A. after they were gone, even if Lyoko needed to be destroyed as well," the mother's eyes began to water at this point in the story, and her tears glinted in the light.

"Aelita eventually moved on, learning to overcome her sorrow of loosing the other inhabitants, and focusing on the task to end X.A.N.A.'s power. Slowly, he began to create more creatures to chase her, and he learned how to manipulate the land, turning the once beautiful regions into torn, desolate lands divided and hard to cross with many hazards. Aelita then spent nearly all of her time in the towers, learning to travel from one region to the other while inside of them. This linked her to the towers' programming, and eventually made her more like a program herself.

"Everyday, she sent warning messages to every system that may have been one of X.A.N.A.'s options for a takeover. Finally, through her research she realized that X.A.N.A. had chosen another world parallel to Lyoko that he would target to invade. That world had many digital and electrical appliances, and X.A.N.A. would have barely any trouble getting in.

"Aelita's frantic messages were finally replied to one day by a young boy who had stumbled upon a large computer in an old factory. Once she had explained her predicament and the seriousness of the matter involving the new world, he had promised to help her anyway he could. His three friends joined him, and together they became Aelita's heroes, finding a way to transfer themselves to Lyoko and creating weapons that they used to defend Aelita as she deactivated towers that X.A.N.A. had finally taken over and was using to try and get to their world through."

"Were they Aelita's knights in shining armor?" the young girl asked excitedly.

The mother's eyes glistened with tears from the memories. "Yes," she managed to keep her voice even. "Yes, they were her knights in shining armor."

"Keep going!" the young girl cheered her on.

The mother went on, "Aelita became friends with her heroes, and loved talking with them. The young boy loved talking with her, too, and he worked hard to try and find a program that would materialize her on his world, so she could shut Lyoko down and stop X.A.N.A. from invading. They were all constantly fighting X.A.N.A.'s attacks in both of the world's, and Aelita learned to deactivate the towers X.A.N.A. had taken and revert the time on the other world to before his catastrophic attacks. This helped save many lives, and was their only method of stopping X.A.N.A. once he reached the other world. After a year of their hard work, Aelita finally was able to be materialized and left Lyoko.

"There were a few problems at first with her materialization; X.A.N.A. had planted a virus in her program that linked her directly to Lyoko. Shutting the parallel world down would kill her, even when she was in the other world. She returned to Lyoko, but was able to visit with her friends until her program was finally debugged and she returned for good. After she was found safe enough on the new world, she and her new friends shut down Lyoko and X.A.N.A., never seeing either of them again, and all lived happily ever after. The End."

"Wow," the girl muttered in awe. "I really like that story." She climbed back under the covers as her mother stood up from the edge of the bed.

"I'm glad you enjoyed it," her mother replied as she picked up the other book from the night stand and took it back to the bookcase, setting it back in it's place.

"Mommy, I just realized something,"

"What, sweetie?" the mother asked.

"That girl in the story has the same name as you do!" the girl nearly exclaimed as she noticed the coincidence. "Your name is Aelita, too, isn't it?"

Her mother simply smiled in return, pushing a piece of her pink hair back behind her ear as she returned to the side of the bed and stood near her daughter. "That's right, sweetie. We have the same name."

"Have you ever been to Lyoko?" her daughter asked anxiously, sitting up again. "Did you know her? Were you related?"

Her mother chuckled gracefully, pulling the covers back over her daughter as the young girl laid back down, still watching her mom and waiting for an answer. "No, I've never met her. It was just a story, sweetie. Lyoko never existed."

"Oh," the girl said glumly. "But you're related to me, because we have the same last name."

"That's right," the mother agreed.

"And Daddy, too," the girl went on. "Because his last name is Belpois, just like ours!"

Her mother smiled at the young child's amusing ingenuity. "Right again, sweetheart. Now, it's time to get to bed."

"Is Daddy going to be home in time to tuck me in?" the girl asked as she hugged her teddy bear close to her.

"I'm afraid he won't be back until late tonight. That nanotechnology doesn't improve itself," answered the mother.

"Will you remind him to say good-night, even if I'm sleeping?" the girl asked.

The mother smiled encouragingly. "I'll let him know. Now, time to get some sleep."

"Okay, good-night, Mommy," the girl replied as she laid her head back down, her light golden hair spilling over the pillow. "I love you."

Her mother leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Goodnight, sweetie. I love you, too." She walked back over to the doorway, pausing to turn back to see her daughter already closing her eyes and drifting off into slumber. "Sweet dreams," she said softly and clicked off the light as she closed the bedroom door.

When outside, she leaned against the door and sighed, closing her eyes. _'Jeremie hates when I tell her the real story,' _ she thought to herself. _'But she has the right to know.' _A smile slowly crept on to her lips. _'Even if she doesn't know to believe it.'_

The End

So how was it? I hope the horrible formatting wasn't too annoying. Thanks for reading, and please review to let me know what you think! Also, please check back soon for my other stories (if they ever make it up...). : D

Thanks again,

Leelei


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